Hey there!

I'm Tiffany Tong

I’m a UI/UX designer currently based in Los Angeles, CA.

A proud cheesehead from Milwaukee, WI, I can spend hours talking about Wisconsin sports and the joys of frozen custard. My love for travel (65+ countries and counting) has fueled my love of photography and music from around the world.

I'm an Asian-American woman, posing in a colorful patterned top. Behind me lies Kathmandu, with the colorful homes and rooftops matching my shirt. There are beautiful mountains further in the distance.

My Journey

I never knew what I wanted to be "when I grew up" but I knew that I wanted to do something with global impact. But while I studied engineering at UCLA, I struggled to connect my coursework with the bigger picture.

Things finally came together at Princeton University when I started working with my PhD advisor, Prof. Wole Soboyejo. A kindred spirit, Wole helped me understand how engineering could be applied to solve "grand challenges" of global health and development. This led to a number of projects centered on topics such as off-grid energy access, clean water, and vaccine delivery. Wanting to explore these themes from different perspectives, I also did a teaching assistantship for a class on social entrepreneurship, pursued a joint certificate with Princeton's public policy program, and interned with the United Nations.

Through these diverse experiences, I fell in love with user research and field work. I loved traveling to different communities and speaking directly with users to learn more about their cultures, their backgrounds, their contexts. And I enjoyed the creative process of working with community members to design and test different prototypes and solutions that could meet their needs.

After graduation, I transitioned to software-based solutions and joined the Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED) based in New York University's Abu Dhabi campus (NYUAD). The majority of projects were focused on agricultural communities in Ghana, for example building mobile apps that allowed farmers to accurately map their farms while building a GIS database for improved land management, track food transportation networks throughout the country, and directly connect buyers and sellers through an SMS-based marketplace. I frequently traveled back and forth between Ghana and Abu Dhabi to build relationships with local communities and stakeholders, conduct extensive user research, and design and test iterative prototypes of our apps.

Following CTED, I decided to offer design research and startup strategy consulting services through Tiffany T Studios. I've worked with a diverse range of clients, ranging from designing the UI for an online giving platform targeting $120M for health care in refugee camps, to advising an energy-access non-profit on their spinoff strategy for product commercialization. I spent a little over two years working with a small startup, Nakama, to manage the agile development of a B2B SaaS application through their private beta-testing round with European industrial supply manufacturers.

In 2021, I also launched Tech By Us as a collective of creators, developers, and entrepreneurs fighting "tech bias" through tools that make it easier for the tech industry to accurately design culturally inclusive products. Our first product is a collection of culturally inclusive UI templates for Adobe Photoshop that feature a wide range of skin tones for software designers to represent their users more accurately.

Key Skills

UI/UX Design
User Testing
Design Thinking
Prototyping
Market Research
Front-end programming
SQL
Debugging

Certifications and Trainings

Google | UX Design Professional Certificate (in progress)
Studio D | Sichuan Field Retreat on Field Study Fundamentals (2017)
I'm wearing my Princeton hat, sitting down. A beautiful view of Idanre Hills in Ondo State, Nigeria, is behind me.I'm in my PhD cap and gown on the day of my graduation from Princeton UniversityI'm standing in front of the East River next to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.I'm in Ghana showing several kids how to use a small drone to take aerial images of their farms that will be used to create a GIS database of their community.

Want to get in touch?

Drop me a line!

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